


Moving Day

by NotASpaceAlien



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen, Humor, Silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 19:59:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9253934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotASpaceAlien/pseuds/NotASpaceAlien
Summary: Aziraphale and Crowley decide to move in together, and it turns out Aziraphale has a bit of a hoarding problem.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Based on real-life personal experiences of the author....
> 
> On tumblr at http://not-a-space-alien.tumblr.com/post/155588733385/moving-day

Crowley was glowing with happiness. Not literally, of course.  But he was very happy.

He was happy because he and Aziraphale were moving to South Downs together.  It had taken a while to get to this point, but this story is not about that. It’s about what happened afterwards. Because Aziraphale had sent Crowley a message asking him to help “sort out his belongings” to get ready for the move.

Crowley’s Mayfair flat had a very minimalistic aesthetic going on, so it only took him about half an hour to pack up his own belongings.  The result was only two cardboard boxes thrown in the backseat of the Bentley. The only thing that remained was his houseplants, which he would take over to the cottage later to ensure they arrived safely.

But Aziraphale’s living space was a bit more…cluttered.  There was the main body of the shop, which had been purposefully kept in disarray to discourage people from coming in, but when Crowley came over even the back room, which customers never saw, was always a mess.  But it was pretty small; Crowley figured that Aziraphale wanted help cleaning it out so that he didn’t take all that junk with him.  Their new living space was smaller than the shop.

It would probably only take about two or three hours to go through everything, and then they could start boxing up everything in the main shop.  The move was planned for next weekend, after all.  His heart fluttered again.

“I’m here, angel,” he sang out as he came into the shop.  The place was already in upheaval, with stacks of boxes and books and odd bits of rubbish scattered here and there.  It was a challenge to find a clear path to the back room, but when he finally managed, he saw Aziraphale in a pair of old trousers and a grubby shirt. The angel was already knee-deep in piles of things he had taken off the shelves.

“Thank goodness,” said Aziraphale. “Would you please hand me another trash bag?”

Crowley noted that Aziraphale was covered in dust and had already accumulated a pile of literal garbage by his feet.  Crowley waded back to the counter in the main shop and grabbed the bag of heavy duty trash bags and brought it back in.

“Thank you, dear,” he said, taking the roll and beginning to stuff a black bag full.  “I didn’t realize how much rubbish I had accumulated back here. I just need to separate the trash from the books and then we can move on.”

“I don’t suppose there’s any way to convince you to pare down your collection?”

“I’m afraid not.”

Crowley had figured that would be the answer, but it hadn’t hurt to try.  Little did he realize this was foreshadowing for how the entire day would go.

“Go ahead and take these out to the main shop, would you?” said Aziraphale, setting a heavy stack of encyclopedias in the demon’s arms.  “I’ve got a pile of things to keep started on the counter.”

“You’re keeping these?” said Crowley, a bit annoyed and noting the date on the covers.  “They’re from 1965.”

“They’re valuable.”

“They’ll say that man hasn’t landed on the moon yet.”

“Vintage.”

Crowley rolled his eyes and moved them without further argument.

He came back in to find another load of books ready to ferry—this time a set of dictionaries from the 80’s.

“Angel, nobody really needs encyclopedias or dictionaries anymore,” Crowley began.

“Well, yes, that’s why they gave them all to me,” said Aziraphale.

“No chance you could pare your collection down at all?  Not even a little?”

“If I have a book in my collection it’s because I’ve already judged that it’s worth holding onto.  There would be no point.  I’m keeping all of them.”

“All right.  Just remember that whatever doesn’t fit in the study at the cottage has to go in the attic.”

“Yes, I remember.  Let’s go through everything and we can move the furniture when it’s all clear.” 

Aziraphale filled three trash bags full of used paper towels and empty alcohol bottles and globs of congealed cocoa and scribbled pages of notes, all the while handing Crowley more books to set out in the shop.

He came back in from setting out a set of thesauri from the early 1900’s to see that Aziraphale was tying the last bag up.  “There, got all the garbage out now, have we?” said Crowley cheerfully.  “It looks a lot bigger in here now without all that stuff in it.”  It was amazing how clean the room was now that it had been emptied.

“Mmm yes,” said Aziraphale pensively. “I’ve only got part of my collection of grimoires and spell ingredients back here, though.  The rest is upstairs in the bedroom.”

“…the bedroom?”

“Yes, there’s a second floor. You’ve never been up there?”

Crowley deflated a little. “Oh.  No, I suppose I forgot about that.”

“We’d better get started on it, then. Grab those trash bags, will you?”

They mounted the staircase and made their way up to the dimly lit second floor.  Aziraphale cracked the door open, and Crowley gasped.  The bedroom was stuffed with boxes and bags and collections of mysterious objects covered in cobwebs; even the bed, dusty from disuse, was cluttered.

“Angel, what _is_ all this stuff?”

“Just…things, you know,” said Aziraphale fretfully.  “I didn’t have room in the shop for all my belongings.  I don’t usually sleep, so I thought the bedroom could be used for extra storage.”

“It’s going to take all day to go through this,” said Crowley, dismayed.

“Oh, stop being dramatic,” said Aziraphale, wading into the mess and picking up a box.  “Just help me start looking through this.”

Crowley picked up the nearest box and opened it.  It contained a variety of ruffled decorations in the shapes of stars and turkeys and candles and lights.

“Are these holiday decorations?” said Crowley.  “I’ve never seen you decorate the shop at all.”

“Oh, that’s where those went!” said Aziraphale.  “I’ve been meaning to decorate for the holidays for decades now, but I never got around to it. Don’t toss those out.”

The next box contained a grimy crockpot, a cookbook, and a set of utensils.

“Aziraphale, you don’t even cook,” said Crowley, showing him the contents.  “What did you get this for?”

“It was a hand-me-down,” said Aziraphale. “I _had_ planned to try and start cooking.  I’m keeping that.” 

Crowley set it aside and dragged another box forwards; it yielded a trowel, a pair of garden gloves, a floppy sunhat, and some nutrient spikes.

“Angel, you don’t garden,” said Crowley. “Even when you were posing as Brother Francis, you didn’t actually garden and just moved the soil around.”

“That’s not true.  I’ll get good use of those once we have more yard space.”

He pushed that to the side and pulled another box towards him.  It contained a few pounds of moldy yarn and knitting needles.

“Angel,you don’t knit!”

“I was going to start!  Don’t throw those out, they’re perfectly good!”

Getting increasingly frustrated, Crowley pushed that box aside and peered into the next one.  He caught sight of a silicone dildo and a bottle of lube.

“Angel, you don’t—”

“The adult shop next door was just going to throw them out!”

“All right,” said Crowley, rubbing his temples.  “Why don’t we do this?  If you haven’t used it in the past six months, and you think you aren’t going to use it in the next six months, you have to throw it out.”

“But that includes most of my books!” Aziraphale exclaimed, alarmed.  “I can’t do that!”

“All right, how about the six month rule, _except_ for if it’s a book.”

“One year.  I have to throw it out if I won’t use it in the next year.”

“Okay.”

“Unless it’s very expensive and would be hard to replace.”

“That's fair.”

Crowley helped him go through all the boxes in the first half of the room, and to his dismay Aziraphale said that he planned to use something from every single box soon.

“This isn’t even usable anymore!” said Crowley, holding the old broken popcorn machine they had dug up.  “If you wanted to make popcorn, you’d go buy a new one instead of using this one.”

“That’s an antique!”

“And you don’t need this space heater. The cottage has central heating.”

“It might get cold in one specific room.”

“Okay, then keep _one_ and pitch the rest.  You have six or seven up here.  Find one that’s not broken.  I’ll get the garbage bag.”

“They can be donated.”

Crowley rubbed his temples.  “All right, let’s do this.  We’ll make three piles.  If you want to keep it, put it by the door.  If you want to donate it, put it in this corner.  If you’re going to throw it out, just put it in the trash bag.”

Crowley watched with mounting aggravation as over the next forty-five minutes, everything went into the “keep” pile.

“Angel,” he said, taking Aziraphale’s hands.  “We don’t have room for all this stuff.  We need to get rid of most of it.”

“I know,” said Aziraphale sadly.

“Okay, imagine the shop has burned down. A cataclysmic accident!  What in this room would you actually miss?”

Aziraphale wrung his hands.  “But that’s wasteful, Crowley,” he said.  “We could use all these things.”

“No.  Nope.  We don’t need them.  If we need something, we can just go buy a nice new one.”

“That’s the spirit of Temptation,” said Aziraphale critically.  “Indulgences. Wasteful excess and debauchery.”

“I _promise_ you it is not debauchery to buy a new set of plates instead of using these ones.”

He eventually managed to get Aziraphale to part with most of the stuff in the room by promising him they would donate it to the homeless shelter.  He was not sure whether or not he was lying.  Most of it was in fairly good condition, if a bit dusty, and he almost didn’t care what happened to it if it meant getting it out of the way.

He made sure that the dildos and expired lube went into the trash instead of the donate pile, at least.

They moved the things to donate to the alley behind the shop, saying they would call the shelter later to see if they could come pick them up.  They went back upstairs and moved the “keep” pile, which was mercifully much smaller, downstairs.

“Whew, all right,” said Crowley, spinning around in the now mostly-empty bedroom.  “That’s done.  See, isn’t this better now?  All that clutter gone!”

“Mmm, yes,” said Aziraphale, not sounding convinced.  “I hope the attic will be this easy.”

“…the attic?”

Crowley watched with horror as Aziraphale led him into the hallway and pulled a staircase down from the ceiling, disappearing up into it and flicking on a light.  “Oh, dear, it’s a great deal dustier up here than I remember.”

Crowley took off his jacket and tie so they wouldn’t get dirty and followed Aziraphale up. 

He emerged into a cavernous space nearly twice the size of the bedroom, but stacked with old, discolored boxes just as thickly.

He groaned.  “Angel, _what_ is all this stuff?”

Aziraphale wrung his hands again. “Well, when I moved in here from my last residence, I _may_ nothave gone through my belongings to pare them down quite as thoroughly as we’re doing now.”

“…What you’re saying is when you moved in here, you just threw all your old stuff in the attic.”

“…Yes.”

“Have you touched any of this stuff since then?”

“Er…Maybe once or twice.”

“And when did you move in here?”

“19…1924.”

“Just throw it all out! If you haven’t used it in almost a hundred years I’m sure you don’t need it!”

“No!” Aziraphale said defensively.  “Some of this is hundreds of years old!  There’s journals, photographs, jewelry, paintings…”

As they began to go through the mess, Crowley finally understood.  Just as Aziraphale’s angelic intelligence was not much greater than a human’s but had the advantage of having thousands of years of practice, so did his angelic hoarding.  He had just accumulated as much as any human would by living for six-thousand years.

“I don’t suppose Adam changed any of this when he gave you the shop back?”

“No, I don’t think his imagination was quite that good.”

Crowley held up a string of pearls he had found in the box he had been rummaging through.  “Are these _real_?”

“A dear friend of mine gave those to me since she didn’t have an heir.”

“And you just left them in the attic?”

“Well, it’s not like she’s the _only_ one who gave me something precious,” said Aziraphale, a bit testily.  “There’s not room for all of it in the shop.”

They pulled out boxes and boxes of black and white photos, which Aziraphale insisted on keeping. The same went for all the jewelry and old, hand-written volumes that came next.  Crowley uncovered a stash of paintings behind the old mirror leaning against the wall.

“Is this by Picasso?” Crowley exclaimed.

“Hm?  It might be.  I don’t really recall where I got it.”

Crowley watched with amazement as the attic yielded one treasure after another, antique writings by famous figures long dead, precious antiques and heirlooms Aziraphale insisted came from humans he had helped, sculptures and pieces of art and things thought lost to history.  Things got progressively older the further back they went.  Crowley could not convince him to part with any of it, which was a shame because they would have been millionaires if they could sell most of it. 

“All right,” said Crowley. “Whatever we’re keeping, let’s take it down into the shop.  The rest let’s just pitch.”

It took over an hour to move everything down from the attic.  They were beginning to run out of room in the main shop.  Crowley was sweating by the time they were finished, a bit angry, knowing that he would never have been able to talk Aziraphale into using miracles to assist them with the process.  “All right,” said Crowley, wiping his face and smearing grime all over it. “I swear to somebody if there’s anything else, I’ll burn down the shop again myself.”

Aziraphale, who was just coming up the stairs and had not heard him, turned to survey the room. “Hmm,” he said.  “Yes, I think this quite takes care of the attic.”

“I should think so,” said Crowley tersely.  “There’s nothing else in here.  It’s empty.”

“Right, well now we can start on the basement.”

“The _basement_?”

Aziraphale’s head had already disappeared down into the light.  Crowley followed, seething with barely suppressed frustration.

There was a door in the back room that had been revealed with the removal of all the clutter.  It was hardly more than a slat of wood; the hinges had rusted away.  Aziraphale opened it by simply moving the panel out of the way, revealing a crypt-like staircase fading way into blackness.

“Okay,” said Crowley. “Aziraphale, this is the last place, right?  After the basement, we’ll be all done, right?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t have any other belongings anywhere else?”

“No.”

“No crawl space?  No off-site storage unit somewhere in London?”

“No.”

“All right.”

Crowley got a flashlight to illuminate their way down.  The light was burnt out, and objects loomed in beastly shapes in the darkness.  They changed the lightbulb, and it glowed weakly in the cavernous space.

“All right,” said Crowley. “Now, what is all _this_ stuff?”

“It’s um…I think it’s the things from when I moved from the place _before_ the last one I lived in.”

“And when was that?”

“18…1893.”

Crowley dragged his hands down his face.  “All right. Be brutal, Aziraphale.  We don’t have room for any of this.  Throw out what you do not absolutely need.”

“What I do not absolutely need.”

“Only keep it if you think you would die without it.”

“Got it.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

Most of the boxes had water damage on them.  Lots of the objects Crowley pulled out were unrecognizable under black mold.  He pulled out a few amphoras he was sure must have been millennia old.

“Is this from that time in Rome??” Crowley exclaimed, digging up an enormous candle.  “Why did you _keep_ this?”

“It has sentimental value.”

“It’s decaying.  I don’t even think you could light it.  And are these brass scales from the market in Egypt?”

“A friend gave those to me!”

“I think he’d be aghast to find them in this condition!  Come on, angel!  Do you really want to keep all this?”

Aziraphale looked conflicted as they moved through the room.  Once, Crowley caught sight of a golden chalice he was pretty sure could be the Holy Grail, and when Aziraphale had his back turned he set it aside so that he could sell it on eBay later.  He also found a chunk of rock that looked like a fossil of some sort, which he suspected had been alive and then died and fossilized under Aziraphale’s belongings.

Most of the things made of paper and cloth and less durable materials were not salvageable at all went into the rubbish; things made of metal and stone that had lasted longer were more difficult, but Crowley managed to convince him to get rid of most of them. They probably would have been a great find for some archeologist who wanted to put them in a museum, but it would have been a great effort to sort through them all by geography and time period and it was already growing dark out.  Aziraphale said he would donate them, but Crowley was too tired to argue and let the angel take ancient pottery and storage jars and antique metalwork up and set them next to the decade-old crockpot and cookbook in the alleyway.

The rest of the basement went into black trash bags and was set on the curb, joining the ever-growing pile of rubbish.  Both of them were covered in grime and dust and sweat by the time they finished, standing panting under the dim lightbulb in the center of the room.

“All right,” said Crowley. “All right, we’re finally done.”

“Why don’t we decide which pieces of furniture we’re taking now that that’s done?”

Crowley screamed internally. “All right,” he said externally.

They started in the back room and made the circuit again.  Aziraphale said they should take the wooden table the two usually had drinks on, which seemed agreeable enough.  Aziraphale never used his bed, and the mattress was ancient, so Crowley insisted on leaving it here.

“Let’s move this out,” said Crowley, motioning to the card table.

“Okay,” said Aziraphale.

They each grabbed one side, lifted—and tried to move off in opposite directions.

“We’re taking this out to the trash, right?” said Crowley.

“No, I’m taking this to the cottage.”

“You’re not taking this!”

“It’s perfectly good!” 

“Not even the homeless shelter would want this crummy table!  It’s filthy and awful and one of the legs is broken!”

“That can be easily fixed! It’s very sturdy otherwise!”

“Sturdy?  Sturdy?   _Sturdy?_ ”

Crowley marched outside, picked a Babylonian stone idol out of the donation pile, came back in, and dropped it on the table, which splintered immediately under the weight.

“Well, we can’t take it _now_ ,” said Aziraphale snippily.  “You broke it.”

“I b—”  Crowley hid his face in his hands and took a long breath. “You know what?  Okay, fine.  Let’s just. Let’s just take all the furniture. I don’t care.  We’ll just cram it in the study, and you can just sit in your study with no room to walk around because you’ve got three card tables and two couches and five easy chairs in it.  That’s fine.  Whatever.” He removed his hands.  “There. _Are we done_?”

It was pitch black outside. The clock told them it was an irresponsibly late hour.

“Yes,” said Aziraphale. “I think we are.”  He stepped over the splinters of the desk, took Crowley’s hand, and nuzzled his grime-stained cheek.  “Thank you for your help, dear.”

Crowley sighed.  “All right.  Let’s go use the shower at my place, why don’t we?  And we can finally get some dinner.”

“That sounds nice.”

Moving out the next weekend was a lot easier with all that old stuff gone.


End file.
